Carlos Acosta’s debut novel, Pig’s Foot is out now, published by Bloomsbury

Pig’s Foot by Carlos Acosta, translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne

From a small hamlet of wooden shacks and red earth deep in the Cuban hinterland, comes a big tale of revolution, family secrets, love and identity across three generations.

One day Oscar Kortico wakes to find himself utterly alone in the world. As the sole descendant of his family line he is not sure what to do or where he should go, but in the midst of this uncertainty, he holds fast to what his grandfather always told him: 'No man knows who he is until he knows his past, the history of his country.’

As he sets out to find the lost village of Pata de Puerco and the meaning of the magical pig’s-foot amulet he has inherited, the search for his country’s hidden history becomes entangled with his search for the truth about himself.

Through a vivid if not entirely reliable retelling of the stories of his ancestors we live the tumultuous history of Cuba through Oscar's eyes, from the arrival of slaves through the wars of independence, to dictatorship, Bacardi rum, revolution and, finally, to a freedom of sorts.